


A Visionary Horror

by peachywise



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Gore, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gen, I'm Sorry, M/M, One Shot, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 11:33:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18590419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachywise/pseuds/peachywise
Summary: You always had visions, but never this bad.Never of Ben's death.At least he was there to reassure you when you woke up, giving you the chance to make sure he was safe, breathing, to hold him so you could make sure the vision wasn't real.





	A Visionary Horror

**Author's Note:**

> hello alright so first things first there is some heavy gore and death tw from the vision but i promise it's not like the biggest angst fest the entire time, there's a moment of fluff and love in here, okay. enjoy!

You had never seen so much blood before.

How could a body hold that much blood? It was a sentiment you had heard in many movies and read in countless books. It always seemed a bit dramatic— used for poor sensationalism to pull at people’s deeper understanding since they had no firsthand experience, but this was literal.  _Visceral._  A horrible idea flashed through your mind of scraping up the blood with shaking hands, trying somehow to fit it back into his veins through the open wounds which covered nearly every part of his body. Ben was only nineteen. He wasn’t fully grown; there was no need for that much blood to have been in his body in the first place. He had been so torn apart that you had difficulty believing he had once been a walking being with a soul at all.

But he was, at least at one point. No matter how horrific it was now, The Horror had been a person. A kindness. Your friend. A part of you had even desired more than that, though you’d never been able to bring yourself to approach him on the subject.

A pitiful time to have such a regret, wasn’t it?

Bending down next to him, you tried hard to ignore how warm the sickening pool you knelt in still was as it seeped through your jeans, inevitably staining your skin. You don’t know why you grasped his face, shaking him and crying out his name like somehow that would revive him. Your mind just detached itself from your body. You couldn’t control your actions, or even register the smell of sickening copper tinge of death intermingling with the old dust and oil of the warehouse. You only watched as you gripped him and hugged him, trying desperately to make out the features of his face past the shattered bones and shift his neck at a proper angle so it didn’t look so broken.

And then the vision faded, and consciousness soon took back it's hold.

At first, the image of your dreamlike apparition carried back to your waking mind, and you swore you could still feel the blood on your fingertips and see Ben’s ripped off tentacles strewn about your room, half burnt and utterly mutilated. You shut your eyes hard and tight, inhaling a sharp breath as you waiting for the resonating image to clear away. When you opened them again, all feeling from the vision was gone, and you were left listening to yourself in the cold darkness choke back sobs, gripping your tear-stained pillow too tight— nearly ripping through to the feathers it held.  

You needed to find Ben. Your visions never made it clear whether what had occurred was in the past, present, or future. Only that the path one was on now would lead to it if it hadn't happened already. Ripping out from your sheets, almost tripping from the way they had tangled between your legs, you swiped aggressively at the wet stains under your puffy eyes, trying to clear up your sight so you could actually see and open up your bedroom door.

Instead, it swung open before you could even attempt it, and arms wrapped around your body tightly, crushing you against a chest. The door was kicked closed and whoever held you ushered you back to the middle of your room, whispering calm words into your ear while smoothing down the hair on your head.

_Ben._

Peeling back slightly away from you, his warm and very alive hands gripped either side of your face, his dark empathetic eyes scanning every small detail of your face. His thumbs wiped away your remaining tears as a relieved sob escaped your lips. “What’s wrong, what’s going on? Are you hurt?” Ben inquired, his voice just as concerned as it was soft and quiet. He took the opportunity to additionally scan the rest of your body as if searching for some sort of injury. Ironic, since you were doing the same, moving your hands rapidly down his arms and chest as if scared this was the vision— that  _this_ moment wasn’t really real.

His hands gently gripped yours, stopping them from their hysterical search and holding them against his chest as he cooed,  “hey, hey, everything’s okay, you’re fine.” You breathing was still ragged, and you tried to get your hands free, but his grip remained tight. “Take a deep breath,” Ben spoke, his voice somehow grounding you back into this reality. You tried to do as he said; one breath in, one breath out, and back in again. You did it for about a minute and a half, shrouded by the darkness and quietness of your room.

You’d finally calm down enough for Ben’s words to really reach you. “What happened?” He questioned, his hands still tightly gripping yours, afraid you’d slip into another disastrous episode. “I was in the kitchen and I could hear you thrashing and yelling through the walls.” Glancing around trying to see what he could make through the dark shadows, he continued his questionnaire by asking, “was someone in here?”

You shook your head, bending your head down to wipe the remaining tears on your face off on your shoulder. “No, it— it was just a vision.”

Ben’s face dropped at that, reflecting a mix of both confusion and concern. “I’ve never heard you react that way before from just a vision,” he said, but you had no reply to offer him in return. He was right. Mostly your visions were small, simple moments in time that lead up to disastrous events or just after them, but never exactly the disastrous event itself. Yes, that had qualified as an after disastrous event, but… it was something you’d never witnessed before. You’d seen dead bodies, but nothing so horrific that even through the vision you could physically feel the malicious mark the event had permanently printed on the place. You wondered if the blood would stain the concrete too.

Snapping you out of your sinking thoughts, Ben squeezed your hands once as he led you back over to you bend, gently urging you to sit down as he soon followed suit, the springs creaking slightly under both of your weight. “This was something new, huh? Tell me about it, I can help.”

Ben was smart but so self-assured. There was no ‘ _maybe_ , I can help’, or ‘ _I’ll try_  and see if I can help.’ Just determination and full belief. It’s part of the reason you loved him in the way you do. He’d never been able to see something or someone in trouble and turn away. Even now he was breaking some sort of unspoken rule; If you ever had a vision, it was supposed to be reported to Reginald immediately, no matter how unimportant it seemed.

Reginald gave you a home, after all. You were supposed to be devoted to him. 

When you were seventeen your parents got too fed up with their problematic child who’s visions dictated their lives so much. You saw things you weren’t supposed to see, secrets and feelings they had tried so hard to keep from you. Too bad you never saw it coming when they kicked you out of the house.

You’d managed for a while— a month exactly— staying with friends or even at times crashing at your high school. It wasn’t until your eighteen birthday that the vision came, one of those ones that showed the aftermath of disastrous effects. You’d always known about The Umbrella Academy. Your mother often bitched about wishing she’d taken the money Reginald had offered to take you in the first place. But what you saw in your vision was absolute destruction. The entire Academy building was turned to rubble after a rather brutal attack. In your vision, you couldn’t tell if any of them had died or if they'd even been inside, but you couldn’t take the risk. You’d felt a kinship with those who had been born with you on the same day, despite not knowing them past the persona’s they faked in all those comics, all those TV spots. You’d raced over to the building in under thirty minutes, banging on the door so loudly and demanding to see Reginald or you wouldn’t leave. Pogo had almost called the cops on you, but there had been some recognition as to who you were from Reginald that he allowed you to speak. And once you told him, he offered you a permanent fixture in his household. The ability to see what could go wrong in their plans was very useful, apparently. And while you didn’t trust him, you needed shelter. A place to belong. He might never treat you with kindness, but that was a useless desire. You just needed to survive.

Thankfully, you didn’t have to live so desolately for long. Ben had shown you a humanity you had never experienced before. Loyalty and a friendship so close that this home no longer became the key to your survival. He was the reason you survived. 

“Don’t go into any warehouses,” you whispered, and as your hoarse voice reached your ears, you wondered how loudly you had actually been screaming. Thank god you were on the bottom floor away from many of the others.

Ben tilted his head slightly, contemplative, and he moved his hands out of yours. A severe feeling of loss settled in the pit of your stomach. “What did you see?”

You had to hold back the bile that threatened to come up the back of your throat as the gruesome vision flashed before your eyes again. Even looking at him now you couldn’t help but see where his bones had been fractured and his skin had been torn away. You had to look away from him and down at your clasped hands, nails digging into the skin of your palms. “I saw what death really looks like,” you spoke, your tone so quiet you were unsure if the silence he offered you in return was because he didn’t hear you in the first place or because he had no reply.

Looking back up at the boy in front of you, his eyes searched yours, his eyebrows scrunched together like this was all some puzzle to figure out.

Then all he said back was, “spooky.”

Seriously? He'd try to break the tension with _that_?

Smacking him on the chest, you scoffed, “Ben, please, I’m serious!” pulling back to wrap your arms around yourself, feeling cold. “It was  _you_ , okay? You were lying in a massive pool of your own blood, contorted in ways I didn’t even think was possible! I could barely even recognize you until I walked up and I tried to wake you up but you just wouldn’t, and I couldn’t even see your eyes your face was just so— so red and marred and—”

You hadn’t even realized you had begun crying again until he wrapped his arms around you, stiff as he tried to suppress the shaking that racked up and down your body as if trying to get you to feel anything at all. You took solace in his warmth, reminding yourself over and over that he was alive, he was alive, he was alive,  _he was alive._

“I get it, I understand, you don’t have to describe it anymore,” Ben spoke softly in your ear, tightening his hold of you just slightly. You wondered if he was saying that for your sake or his sake, but you didn’t care. You just wanted to forget.

Gripping his thin cotton t-shirt in your hands, you pressed your face into the crook of his neck as you muttered brokenly, “just don’t leave, okay? Promise me.  _Please_.” You felt Ben nod his head slightly, as he ran his hand up and down your back in a soothing motion. “I promise. Dying is the last thing on my to-do list,” he stated, pulling back to offer you a comforting smile. You rubbed your hands over your eyes to wipe away your tears yet again, nodding your head determinately.

Okay. Okay, he promised. He was fine, he was safe.

His hand still stayed wrapped around you, and you took the moment to catch your breath. Ben waited, patient as ever. He still held the same soft smile, pushing back your hair slightly as he asked, “are you sure this was a vision and not a dream? You were already asleep when it came on, right?”

His words tugged your rational mind back to the forefront a little bit. He was right. Visions didn’t tend to come to you when you were unconscious, usually just taking over when you were awake. It had happened, yes, but not very often. Still, what you had seen seemed way too vivid to be a dream. You weren’t sure even your mind could come up with such grotesque imagery.

“I don’t really know,” you murmured, “visions and dreams appear similar but this just… it seemed so real.”

“Then it was probably just a nightmare,” Ben replied, his voice sounding entirely sure. “And if not? Well, I know about it now. We can change the course of this path, we've been able to before. It’ll be okay.”

You nodded your head, his logic and presence becoming more reassuring by the second. He was right. He was here, and he knew about it now. He was here, and he was safe. He was here, and that'swhat was important.

You couldn’t take it for granted.

“I need you, Ben,” you pleaded, the hush of your voice wrapping around both of you in desperate sincerity. Reaching out to brush a feather-light touch against his cheek, you reiterated in more detail, “I need you. You’re the one person trust in this world, and I never knew what love was supposed to feel like until I met you. I would do anything I could to protect you, to stop whatever it was I saw from happening.” Sniffling slightly in the silent moment, Ben gingerly reached up and grabbed your hand in both of his, staring at you with an intense look you couldn’t quite decipher, something you hadn’t once seen cross his features before.

This was dumb. It wasn’t like you to get this sappy with him, especially to the level you just did now. Usually, you two were playful with one another, teasing and laughing, but this was new territory brought out from fear and desperation. God, you felt as if your body might crack and shatter under that stare of his. 

“Forget it. I’m just being emotional,” you huffed out a pathetic sad laugh as if you tried making a joke. “Just don’t die, okay?” Pulling back slightly, you tried to remove your hand from his, but he wouldn’t let it go.

He wouldn’t drop that intense stare.

“No,” he replied back firmly, dropping your hand only to snake his arm back around your waist and pull you closer, the other hand cupping the side of your face. “I don’t want to forget what you just said,” he breathed heavily, and before you could even consider what was going on, his lips pressed against your own in such desperation that it should have left you feeling heavy and dizzy instead of making you feel as if the weight of your worries had been taken off your chest instead.

Breaking away simply to catch your missing breath, you barely gave yourself time to think before you brought your lips back to his, this time softer, slower, but still filled with reassurance and the countless hours of never spoken sentiment between both of you. You wanted this memory to burn over the remnants of the vision or dream, wanted this to be the moment you lived in and remembered. You gripped onto him as he gripped just as tightly onto you, an anchor in this life and in this living breathing moment.

My god, you never wanted to let go of that.

Ben pulled away shortly afterward, his face flushed and pink, unable to hold back a nervously happy smile. “Well, that just solidified it,” Ben commented with a small laugh, “there’s no way in hell I’m dying and given this up now."

Your own small smile befell your face as you loosened your hold on him, only just a little. “Good. It really would be a shame after that if you’d just up and died on me,” you half teased, both of you giving small laughs and bending your foreheads together.

“Can you stay with me tonight, though?” You questioned, a little sheepishly as your eyes traced every inch of his face, memorizing every small feature. “Just in case?”

Ben’s grin turned soft once more, and without replying, he just wordlessly scooted up to your headboard and lifting up your comforter and sheets in order to climb in. "Come on."

You offered a smile back, crawling under alongside with him and wrapping your arms around him, resting your head on his chest. And with every beat of his heart you heard, the more your own heart seemed to rest, content and happy and safe. 

You felt him place a small kiss on the crown of your head, and you could have sworn you heard him quietly murmur a gentle “I love you,” as your eyes closed and unconsciousness swept you away.

And you tried to hold on to that memory. His reassurances. His touch.

It just grew increasingly difficult with each hour that passed the next morning, alone and waiting, as you continually read over the words on the note he left on your bed:

_Had to leave for a mission with the others. Didn’t want to wake you._

_I promise I’ll be safe._

_Love,_

_Ben._


End file.
